Meet the People Who Wrecked Your Civil Liberties

by Jason Kuznicki on June 16, 2010

They’re desperately incompetent morons with a taste for porn and bestiality. Yes, there’s propaganda value in showing the dumber side of al Qaeda. But we gave up habeas corpus for fear of them?

Tagged as: al-Qaeda, civil liberties

Jason Kuznicki is a research fellow at the Cato Institute and editor of Cato Unbound. He's on twitter as JasonKuznicki. His interests include political theory and history.

{ 8 comments }

1 Will June 16, 2010 at 10:49 am

Unfortunately, we’re faced with the problem of symmetrical idiocy. Substitute “airport personnel” for “Al Qaeda” and you’ve probably got a fair description of the foibles of airport security:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/the-things-he-carried/7057/

2 Mike Schilling June 16, 2010 at 11:04 am

I presume we all know the story about time zones and the Bay of Pigs.

3 Dan Miller June 16, 2010 at 1:30 pm

Yeah, when I read the first sentence I assumed there was some scandal at DHS.

4 Rufus June 17, 2010 at 10:08 am

I’ve been thinking for a while that we need some new Looney Tunes making fun of Al-Quaida.

5 Jaybird June 17, 2010 at 10:31 am

@Rufus, make sure that Mohammed doesn’t show up lest cars armed with makeshift bombs show up in Times Square.

(Remember when the above would have been seen as slanderous?)

6 Scott June 17, 2010 at 12:19 pm

The surest way to lose is to underestimate your enemy and fail to respect them. They are human as we are and therefore subject to being as stupid and as devious as we are. Look at the US attitude toward the Japs in WW2 and what our underestimation cost us.

7 greginak June 17, 2010 at 12:38 pm

@Scott, Before the war Americans thought little of the Japanese so they were very possibly contemptuous and not ready. But once the war started American soldiers had , for quite a while, an almost superhuman view of the Japanese. They inflated their abilities as fighters, which did not help, if anything it hurt morale and confidence to think the Japanese were born to fight in the jungle, etc. Accuracy is a better option then either over or under inflating opinions.

8 Barry June 28, 2010 at 12:25 pm

I’d add that *they* didn’t take our civil liberties away, it was *Americans* who did that.

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